How To Download Windows 10 Technical Preview First Major Update with new Action (Notification) Center

On October 21st, shortly after the initial announcement of Windows 10 Technical Preview, Microsoft rolled out a new preview build which happens to be the first major update to the next version of Windows. This new major update was rolled out through a new feature built right in the new system. You don’t have to hunt down the resources where to download the update. It’s right there along with Windows Update.

This guide will show you how to upgrade your existing Windows 10 Technical Preview to this latest release, which includes a brand new Action Centre (notifications). But before we begin, there are a few important things to keep in mind.

the update requires 2GB-2.74GB of download space, and needs an additional 5GB free spaces to finish the installation.

there are known existing bugs and issues with the latest preview, for instance, the UI is not yet complete, hence you will see a “backwards” UI look temporary for now.

between the first public preview build 9841 and the new build 9860 there are over 7000 fixes.

Once you started the download process, it will attempt to install after the download is finished. You will need to reboot your machine to complete the installation.

Restart to finish the upgrade to the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Just like how you set up new Windows 8 system, you will go through the process of installation a new Windows 10, which is going to take sometime to setup the apps. The rainbow color will appear during this process.

Once you have done installation, you will see this new icon on the right of the taskbar. This is where the new Action Center will take place. Currently, as mentioned above, Microsoft is working on the refinement of the UI, hence this will not look the same as the final version. As the name suggests, this will be the new place where all your new notifications are aggregated.

Also, go back to PC settings → Update and Recovery → Preview Builds again, you will see a new dropdown selection that lets you to choose how often you’d want to get new preview build updates. There are two release channels, one is slow (default), and the other is fast. The faster the channel you are on, the more frequent the update you will be receiving. However, that also means the more bugs you might encounter along the way, since it will not be as polished as slower releases.

Here is a graph that shows how the release channel works and how often those releases will be pushed out to you based on the channel you have selected.